


New Friend

by texastoasted



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Frankie - Freeform, Gen, dad!spy, god i love frankie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 05:24:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17115242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/texastoasted/pseuds/texastoasted
Summary: All Scout has ever wanted is a puppy of his own. Spy is apparently the only one who thinks it's a ridiculous idea, but in the end, peer pressure wins over.A TF2 Secret Santa 2018 gift!





	New Friend

**Author's Note:**

> happy holidays to @geeneelee on tumblr!

Warm days like this one made Scout’s bones that were far too young for aching this way yearn for home. They reminded him of sticky ice cream summers, chasing his brothers around the baseball diamond, listening to the radio with half an ear while he was elbows deep in kitchen sink suds. It was finally Saturday, finally ceasefire, and he could cease gazing up at the endless blue when he was supposed to be capping the point and bouncing off the concrete walls at mealtimes. Scout loved Saturday mornings, when there was a slow but steady trudging of activity around the base. He would never admit it, but the feeling of family here was comfortably similar to the one he’d had in Boston. Scout knew if he jogged through the kitchen, there’d be pancakes left over, melted chocolate chips setting on the countertop, everyone attending to their own business. He loved it. His business this morning was practicing his game. He’d been getting a little sloppy with the sandman lately, and Sniper really thought it was funny to remind him about it over dinner, like he was some all-seeing eye in the sky that never had any problems with aim. Scout would sometimes try to wrangle one of the guys into playing baseball with him, but he hadn’t had any luck last night. It was no matter, the general store in town was well-stocked on baseballs.

Scout’s shoes kicked up little clouds of dust, the sun already comfortably blanketing the exposed freckled skin on his neck and shoulders. Having the whole day ahead of him with nothing much to do was a pleasant feeling, warm in the apples of his cheeks. He should probably do laundry, but he could probably convince Demo to do his again if he went down to Teufort on a liquor run.  
The cracking of his bat against new baseballs was a sound that soon dominated the various chirping of birds and insects that was usually drowned out by gunfire; Scout did not even notice Spy come up behind him, although his teammate was usually too silent to be noticed by anyone anyway.

“You would have better luck if you waited longer before swinging,” Spy pointed out, tapping ash from his ever-present imported cigarette into the dirt before grinding it out with his heel.

Scout turned quickly on one well-worn heel, concealing the fact that he’d jumped a practical foot. “Aw, what would you know about baseball? Stop messing with me.”

Spy remained silent, eyes glittering like a patient snake’s, and simply exhaled a cloud of smoke.  
Scout did not bother to look if he was continuing to be watched, but relented a little and waited longer before letting himself swing the bat. It was a mixed feeling that rolled in his belly when it soared further, just missing a small window at the top of the granary and ricocheting off the wood to land near the fence. He could have sworn he heard a “bon” before he dropped the bat and took off across the bridge to shake out some boiling-over energy, but chose to ignore it, only focusing on zeroing in on his ball. Scout stood for a while, hands on his hips, squinting like he was caught in a sandstorm. He could have sworn it fell over here, and yet, the grass was peacefully un-crushed and empty, only softly wafting in the breeze. 

“There’s my ball!”

It had rolled under the fence, hiding in the shadow of the granary’s tallest building, and Scout did not hesitate as he flattened himself to the ground, wiggling on his stomach, stuffing one arm through the twisted hole in the fence(probably blasted away by a stray rocket or bomb) and straining to reach it. He screwed up his left eye as metal pushed up the skin of his cheek, fingers wiggling like a frightened spider, just a bit further-

A shape materialized out of the shadow, and it took Scout a moment to realize it was a puppy, skipping towards him with a hopeful gleam in its eye that it would have someone to play with. At the same time it saw Scout, it saw the ball, and unabashedly charged towards it, tiny legs almost tripping over one another under its barrel-shaped body. Scout groaned as its drooling mouth seized the ball, sharp little puppy teeth surely working an opening in the seams. “Come on, man,” he complained, and then suddenly realized that he was not at home in a sparse baseball diamond down the block, but in New Mexico. On a supposedly-secret base, where the only living things they saw were each other, and there were not supposed to be dogs here. Sure, when they left the base, there was some wildlife in the desert. But a puppy? All alone?

“Hey, c’mere. C’mere, doggie. Come to old Scout. I’ll give you a real good scratch behind the ears if you do. Doesn’t that sound nice? Oh yeah, I bet it does.”

The puppy cocked its head, silken ears dangling in the breeze, drool dripping around the ball into a quickly forming puddle in the dirt.

“I’ll even throw it for you. C’mere, doggie.”

“Scout,” came a very unimpressed voice, “I am not surprised to see you writhing in the dirt like a worm, but now you’re talking to the fence, and I must express concern.”

Scout hastily got to his feet, brushing dirt off his pants, and jabbed a defensive finger through the fence. “There’s a puppy over there.”

Spy’s eyebrows raised so high on his forehead they nearly disappeared under his mask. “A puppy? Surely the heat has gotten to you.”

Bark, went the puppy happily.

“How did it-”

“Doesn’t matter, man! We gotta get it.”

“I’m sure you can acquire another baseball elsewhere, Scout.”

“It’s not about the ball! He’s out here! Alone! Could be picked up by a bird of prey or something, like Sniper says he sees happen to rabbits! We gotta protect him!”

Spy looked at the puppy, whose tail was beginning to wag, and turned his unimpressed face back to Scout. “Scout. Be reasonable. I am positive it is not in the Administrator’s budget to purchase puppy food, and besides, he probably belongs to a distracted child around here.”

“But-”

“Do not take the puppy, Scout.”

“BUT-”

“There is no one to look after him while we are fighting. You know this. Be realistic.”

“Man, come on. You gotta be heartless.” Scout muttered under his breath, scuffing his foot in the dirt. He had to tear away his gaze from the puppy’s, whose tail was beginning to slow wagging as he realized they were not going to come over the fence and play with him. The droop in the little sausage’s tail shattered Scout’s heart and kicked the pieces into the gutter. Before he could muster up an apology, it trotted away with his ball, leaving behind a trail of drool as it receded into the shadows. The rest of his day was properly ruined, and Scout spent the hours before dinner drawing with Pyro, which was usually fun except he realized he kept drawing the puppy at different angles, it bounding over tufts of grass as it chased a baseball that was happily thrown for him for hours. Pyro cocked their mask, pointing at the puppy and then Scout. A sound came from the mask. Yours?

“Man, I wish,” Scout said miserably, and tossed the pad across the room.

Throughout dinner he was unusually silent, moving around a piece of Engineer’s cornbread back and forth on his plate, cheek sunken into the palm of his hand as he ignored the conversation.

“What is the matter with Scout?” Heavy finally asked quietly, unfortunately at a lull in conversation, and everyone on the team turned to look at him.

“Nothing.” 

Scout could tell Spy was rolling his eyes. “He is upset because some poor child’s puppy wandered just outside of the base, and I told him he could not just take it.”

“You don’t know it had an owner, man! It didn’t have any tags on or anything!”

“As if that is really the biggest issue.” Spy replied, examining the tines of his fork.

“Man, come on!” Scout spat, his chair screeching sharply as he pushed away from the table, water glasses rattling. “I’ve always wanted a puppy, man! All through when I was a kid! I never got to have one! I’d make it work for the little guy!”

There was a strange expression on Spy’s face that Scout just caught a glimpse of before he left the kitchen, Engineer’s fork hovering precariously above his plate, eyes flicking back and forth between Spy and Scout behind his goggles.

 

The outburst wasn’t spoken of around the base for another few days. Soldier noticed Scout miserably patrolling the perimeter of the base when they weren’t fighting, laying on his belly and pushing bits of chicken and a dish of water through a ragged hole in the fence. Heavy finally made a point about it when it began to intrude upon their working hours, Scout turning on his heel and sprinting towards the fence when he thought he saw the puppy. It was this distraction that got Medic backstabbed by a far too obvious enemy Spy, and the spitting German practically propelled Heavy into Spy’s smoking room to get the feud to stop.

“You will talk to Administrator about keeping puppy.” Heavy sighed.

Spy turned a page in his novel, idly rolling his ankle. “You cannot be serious.”

“Am serious. Doktor has doves, no?”

“A puppy is a lot more responsibility than a few birds.”

“You do not think Scout could take care of him?”

Spy did not answer. Heavy ran a head absently over the top of his head. “Is beginning to influence performance. At least talk to Administrator. If is no one’s puppy, he could stay. Other members of team would like new friend.”

Spy finally put down his book on the intricately carved walnut side table with an indignant thump, practically seething. There were a million insulting statements zipping through his mind. They were at war, for the love of God, mercenaries at war and one of them wanted a puppy? The Administrator would never agree. Was he supposed to remember everything that Scout asked for as a child? Scout needed to learn to get over things that were never meant to be, he needed to realize the puppy had left, wasn’t coming back, wouldn’t be his. It was quite a speech for the silent giant, and Spy didn’t appreciate the feeling that he was being conspired against.

But the thing that came out of his mouth was, “Why me?”

Heavy only looked at him. “Have something to make up for, for Scout.”

 

“It just sucked, man, y’know? I would have killed for a puppy. A little dog to grow up with, one that could run with me as much as I loved to run? I know we were too poor and all to have one, but God, every Christmas, I let myself hope.” Scout’s foot sailed into a bin of scrap metal that had been this afternoon’s punching bag, making an awful rattling noise that Engineer was patiently tolerating. Normally, he’d make the boy stop, but Scout was doing some kind of grieving. He made an assenting humming noise, peering through his toolbox for the right size screwdriver. 

“Like, I know we’re at war! But he’s all alone out there! Sniper’s horror stories of big ass hawks and eagles and whatever coming down and taking off with rabbits are haunting me, Engie! How am I supposed to sleep?”

“We’ll get past it, son.”

“But-” Scout complained, preparing to deliver another kick to the bin.

There was a string of expletives spat in French from somewhere outside of the garage. “Do you know how expensive this suit is? Non, you probably do not care, you are a godless little creature-”

“Spy?” Engineer asked incredulously. “You all right out there?”

“Tell Scout to come pick up his charge,” the voice snivelled back.

Engineer turned his gaze to Scout; the boy looked like he was circling around disbelief. “Well, go on, then!”

The slobbering ball of fur held in Spy’s outstretched fingers was the most beautiful sight in the world to Scout in that moment, its round body beginning to wiggle so hard when they met eyes that he threatened to slip out of Spy’s gloves. The puppy barked happily, its pink tongue hanging out the side of its mouth, looking like he had been looking for Scout forever. Scout almost cried as he took him from Spy, cradling him like an infant, the puppy steadily painting the side of his cheek with drool.

“How did you-?” Scout asked, stroking one impossibly soft puppy ear. 

Spy ignored the question. “The Administrator wants to convey that you’ll have to watch him, feed him, clean up after him. Once you learn how to do that for yourself, you should have no trouble with him.”

Scout ignored the insult. Engineer had drifted outside the garage behind them, and smiled as he reached out to stroke the puppy’s head. “What are you going to name him, Scout? Aw. You could train him to fetch.”

“I dunno yet,” Scout declared, screwing up his nose as it was slobbered after. “Kinda looks like a Frankie to me. Frankie. Yeah, Frankie! Do you like that? Come on, Frankie, let me teach you how to play baseball.”

Engineer watched the two of them trot away, his thumbs looped under the straps of his overalls. “You did a good thing, Frenchie.”

“Be quiet, laborer,” Spy answered, but there was no real malice in it.


End file.
